The present study compares the perceptions of fairness of national earned incomes between the populations of Germany and the rest of Europe based on recent data from the European Social Survey (ESS). The vast majority of European respondents consider very low gross earned incomes to be unjustly...

European societies have been experiencing growing income and wealth inequalities over the past few decades, and, accordingly, they are a topic of intense discussion. Although the population's evaluation of inequalities as just or unjust is important for designing social policies, there has been...

Earnings differences are a recurring topic of public discussion in Germany. Data from the long-term Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study as well as a separate survey of German employees (LINOS) show that earnings inequalities are generally perceived as fair while a substantial share of the...

Food banks are returning to the spotlight as their use increases due to the coronavirus pandemic and the influx of Ukrainian refugees to Germany. The current discussion is focused on whether the food banks can handle the increasing number of users as well as the financial and organizational...

For the first time in 2020, the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), an annual survey of private households, surveyed the donation behavior of a random sample of high net worth individuals that had been added in 2019. As a result of this sample, the volume of private donations increased from 9.7 to 10.3...

The total number of dependent employees in Germany has increased by more than four million since the financial crisis. Part of this growth took place in the low-wage sector. Analyses based on data from the Socio-Economic Panel, which in 2017 for the first time include detailed information on...

There has been a universal statutory minimum wage in Germany for a good four years, but many employees still do not receive it. This is the finding of new calculations based on the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), which have updated noncompliance with the minimum wage for 2017. Even conservative...

Despite the booming German labor market, wage inequality is still a relevant issue. In the present study, the authors report on the changes in wages and their distribution between 1992 and 2016. In addition to real contractual gross hourly wages, we closely examined gross monthly and annual...

The number of employed persons in Germany has grown by over five million since 2000, in part due to an increase in immigration. This development is reflected in private household income, which has increased by 12 percent over the same period. Since 2013, all income groups have been benefiting...

Individuals with assets in the millions of euros have been underrepresented in population surveys and accordingly little has been known about them. As a result, the full extent of wealth concentration in Germany was unknown. To close the existing data gap, the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) inte-...